Free Period Frights

Thursday, October 31, 2024. The spookiest day of the year. You arrive at school twenty minutes earlier than usual, and you need to kill some time.

You decide to relax on the seventh floor, right by the plants. As you head towards the one-to-three escalator, you're blocked by a six-foot junior screaming, “Where my hug at?” Once you scurry your way through the crowd, you finally make it on the escalator. You try to walk down, but you smell out a freshman with BO that reeks of pizza on his iPad, blocking the entire left side of the escalator. 

After waiting for what seems like forever, you get to the seventh floor and sit down, ready to relax and play some Block Blast. Suddenly you hear a faint whisper, “Did you really do all your homework?” You feel a chill shiver down your spine. Suddenly, a stubby five-foot student with chunky, black frames appears next to you—hovering midair—and blows wind through your ear. You hurriedly grab out your Algebra 2 homework and check if it is done. With this sudden feeling of worry, you flip to the back and are relieved it’s blank. 

You accidentally drop your notes and hear another whisper, “Sah… Coa… Toh…”  You realize that this isn’t right, but your brain scrambles to remember anything, and all you can think about is Kanye saving Taylor Swift from Beyoncé. Before you know it, a student with color-coated MUJI pens, a 15-pack of highlighters, and a page of notes with one too many posts-its on is sitting on the floor in front of you.

With a blink of an eye, the ghost disappears. You put everything in your bag and make a run for it, but you then hear another murmur, “Clear everything from your desks except for a pen and paper.” You turn your head and see a teacher with a striped polo shirt, khaki pants, and tennis shoes. 

Things couldn’t get any worse, right? But you feel the presence of yet another ghost. This time, it is the embodiment of past students who have been deceived by the programming office. When you're running down the stairs, you see a student holding four AP Barrons Self-Study Textbooks chanting “You're not getting any APs… except for AP Precalc.” 

You try to text your friends, asking them for help, but the internet connection of DOEGuest goes from three bars, to two bars, to No Service. Your screen freezes, and your phone is stuck on the dreaded Jupiter page that you check every five minutes.

Luckily, you hear the warning bell and realize you're going to be free from your free soon. You hide in a corner of the Hudson stairwell until the end bell rings. You survived the free period, but the ghosts are still out there, awaiting their next victims. Your phone opens and you scurry to your Notion dashboard. In reminders, you write: Bring cafeteria garlic bread, water from the fancy water fountains, and actually finish your homework. You walk to your next class and as you enter the room, your teacher hands you a piece of paper that's face down. Your teacher opens youtube and chooses a five-minute timer with a bright neon background. You think to yourself I should've studied. Because these academic weapon ghosts? They never rest.